At 06:25 AM 10/27/96 -0400, Johanne L. Tournier wrote:
>At 11:27 25/10/96 -0400, Eva Balogh wrote:>> And a little Hungarian lesson. You cannot say "nagyon tisztelettel.">>If you want to embellish "tisztelettel/respectfully" the only adjective you>>can add is "o"szinte/sincere" as in "o"szinte tisztelettel.">>Does that apply to *u:dvo:zlettel* as well? Can one say *nagyon>u:dvo:zlettel* or *o"szinte u:dvo:zlettel* or is there a third modifier for>use with *u:dvo:zlettel*? You know, it is not so hard to find examples of>things you can say in Hungarian, but it is hard to determine what you>*can't* say!
The problem is with the *nagyon*, which is an adverb. To modify a noun
(udvozlet, tisztelet), you have to use an adjective, like nagy, oszinte,
etc. but not nagyon, oszinte'n, etc. So, you can say *nagy udvozlettel*
(gramatically correct, but not used, because it just does not sound right -
greetings, big greetings, very big greetings?;-), or *nagy tisztelettel*
(sounds good, probably because respect can be greater, smaller or totally
missing), also *oszinte tisztelettel* (because some respect can be sincere
and some can be not) and probably even *oszinte udvozlettel* (because some
greetings could be not so sincere as others).
Is this clearer now?
Gabor D. Farkas

At 11:27 25/10/96 -0400, Eva Balogh wrote:
<snip the 1956 stuff>
> And a little Hungarian lesson. You cannot say "nagyon tisztelettel.">If you want to embellish "tisztelettel/respectfully" the only adjective you>can add is "o"szinte/sincere" as in "o"szinte tisztelettel."
Does that apply to *u:dvo:zlettel* as well? Can one say *nagyon
u:dvo:zlettel* or *o"szinte u:dvo:zlettel* or is there a third modifier for
use with *u:dvo:zlettel*? You know, it is not so hard to find examples of
things you can say in Hungarian, but it is hard to determine what you
*can't* say!
<snip again>
> Eva Balogh
Thanks for the help!
Yours,
Johanne/Janka
>>
Johanne L. Tournier
e-mail -

At 04:06 AM 10/27/96 -0800, Gabor Farkas wrote:
>At 06:25 AM 10/27/96 -0400, Johanne L. Tournier wrote:>>At 11:27 25/10/96 -0400, Eva Balogh wrote:>>>> And a little Hungarian lesson. You cannot say "nagyon tisztelettel.">>>If you want to embellish "tisztelettel/respectfully" the only adjective you>>>can add is "o"szinte/sincere" as in "o"szinte tisztelettel.">>>>Does that apply to *u:dvo:zlettel* as well? Can one say *nagyon>>u:dvo:zlettel* or *o"szinte u:dvo:zlettel* or is there a third modifier for>>use with *u:dvo:zlettel*? You know, it is not so hard to find examples of>>things you can say in Hungarian, but it is hard to determine what you>>*can't* say!>>The problem is with the *nagyon*, which is an adverb. To modify a noun>(udvozlet, tisztelet), you have to use an adjective, like nagy, oszinte,>etc. but not nagyon, oszinte'n, etc. So, you can say *nagy udvozlettel*>(gramatically correct, but not used, because it just does not sound right ->greetings, big greetings, very big greetings?;-), or *nagy tisztelettel*>(sounds good, probably because respect can be greater, smaller or totally>missing), also *oszinte tisztelettel* (because some respect can be sincere>and some can be not) and probably even *oszinte udvozlettel* (because some>greetings could be not so sincere as others).
Yes. The main problem is adverb versus adjective. However, usage
dictates such combinations, and "nagy" is not used with closures. When it
comes to u:dvo:zlet, the following combinations are used: szi've'lyes,
bara'ti, and once upon the time: elvta'rsi (comradely). By the way, I have
never heard of o"szinte u:dvo:zlettel.
Szi've'lyes u:dvo:zlettel, Balogh E'va.

Subject:
Romanians in Hungary (11)
Date:
Sun, 27 Oct 1996 04:36:04 GMT
From:
Mihai Caragiu >
Organization:
mathematics department WSU
Newsgroups:
soc.culture.romanian
Baron Bannfy on 11 July 1906 declared: "The legal state is
the aim, but with this question we can only concern ourselves
when we have already assured the national state... Hungary's
interests demand its erection on the most extreme Chauvinist
lines".
By the end of 1909 the Coallition Government had crumbled, and
early in 1910 the Liberals were re-constituted as the Party of
National Work. The new premier was Count Khuen-Hedervary who
during his twenty years as Ban of Croatia had corrupted a whole
generation and played off Serb and Croat against each other.
The Khuen elections of 1910 eclipsed even Bannfy's record for
bribery and violence: and the premier's understudy, Jeszenszky,
devoted special attention to his old enemies the non-Magyars.
Troops were employed in 380 constituencies, and when this was
criticised in Austria an official "Communique" explained that
"only" 194 batallions of infantry and 114 squadrons of cavalry
were used. Ten romanians electors were killed and the vanquished
spoke bitterly of "a real civil war".
Under the impression of this victory Count Stephen Tisza addressed
the House on the Racial question and defined the pre-War Magyar
policy more authoritatively than ever before.
The whole house without distinction of party must, he agreed,
welcome with "patriotic joy" the fact that the elections had
"virtually wiped the nationalist agitators out of the public life".
===
Reference: "A history of the Roumanians,
from Roman times to the completion of unity"
by R. W. Seton-Watson. Cambridge [Eng.], The University press, 1934.
viii, 596 p. XVI pl.(port.,incl.front.)fold.map. 25 cm.

In article <v02140b01ae97fb1a3430@[204.134.209.193]>,
says...
>>Dear George, somewhere in the greater past I seem to remember having read>postings by you I agreed with. Even this time, I am gratified that you>agree with me on the effect of Foehn on suicide. It was also clearly>evident when the 'investors' on the New York Stock Exchange started jumping>from the windows at the time of the Crash (have you ever heard of that?), I>believe in 1929. Why does somebody post an idiocy like this, and ridicule>it if somebody shows up that idiocy?>If you think that the life in Hungary was as good in the last 500 years as>yours at your peabrained address in England, that's your privilege. Do you>really think, that the only postings on this list acceptable by you in your>ivory towers are those which use four letter words and address their fellow>posters as variants of morons? Well, now I applied such epithets to you,>so maybe now you accept me in your august fraternity.
Idiocy? pea-brained? four lettered words (huh??), morons?
Tsk, tsk, cheer up...Hey, look out, the Foehn's about! ;-)
--
George Szaszvari, DCPS Chess Club, 42 Alleyn Park, London SE21 7AA, UK
Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy * ICPUG..C=64 * ARM Club..Acorn * NWLCC

In article >, says...
>>Hmm... I've heard about that theory that J.S. Bach and co. were of Magyar>lineage... But what's a "brook" in Magyar. If its "brook" in English, and>"Bach" in German what is it in Magyar?
My dictionary gives csermely or patak. What does yours offer? ;-)
--
George Szaszvari, DCPS Chess Club, 42 Alleyn Park, London SE21 7AA, UK
Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy * ICPUG..C=64 * ARM Club..Acorn * NWLCC

In article >, Peter k Chong
> writes:
>To me the Magyars are descendants of the former group and I strongly>stand by this. The languages of the Finno-Ugrians, Huns, Avars,>Magyars as well as Mongols, Turks and Manchus radiated from a>common source - Sumerian.>>
We've been through this before on this newsgroup. It's not true. Sumerian
is a language isolate and has no known modern survivors. The Uralic
languages (or Finno-Ugric, if you like) may or may not be related to the
Altaic language family (Mongol, Turk, et al.). If you can prove that
Sumerian is related to Hungarian, please do it because you'll have pulled
off one of the greatest coups in the field of linguistics in two or three
decades.
Sam Stowe
"Earth to Fred, Earth to Fred...
Ahhh, come in, Congressman..."
-- Tag line from a t.v. ad run by
Democratic challenger David Price
against incumbent U.S. Congressman
Fred Heineman (Fourth District,
North Carolina). Last year, Heineman
enraged thousands of his constituents
when he insisted publicly that his $100,000+
annual salary and pension placed him in
the "lower middle class."

At 11:34 AM 10/27/96 -0500, Sam Stowe wrote:
<snip>
>We've been through this before on this newsgroup. It's not true. Sumerian>is a language isolate and has no known modern survivors. The Uralic>languages (or Finno-Ugric, if you like) may or may not be related to the>Altaic language family (Mongol, Turk, et al.). If you can prove that>Sumerian is related to Hungarian, please do it because you'll have pulled>off one of the greatest coups in the field of linguistics in two or three>decades.
Too late, Sam! The following was forwarded to me by a friend and it's a
real stunner. The search for the origins of Hungarian may be over.
-------------
Surprise your cat by speaking Hungarian
The claim that aliens speak Hungarian (Language, The Magazine,
issue 292) should not be dismissed lightly. John Nadler writes:
"According to evidence uncovered by an American UFO researcher Glenn
Campbell, Hungarian may be the mother tongue of alien visitors to the earth."
My research in more than 20 countries indicates that cats all
over the world are able to understand Hungarian. To test this, try
saying "Cica-mica gyere ide" (pronounced "tsitsah mitsah djere eede")
meaning "come here kitten mitten". Tha cat's initial reaction will be to
prick up its ears in surprise that you can speak its language. It may
then come to you.
Could this mean that there is some connection between aliens and
cats - and Hungarians?
Bernie Awb
Madrid, Spain
------------------
This is even better than the Sumerian connection, no?
Joe Szalai
"Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact
language remains the master of man."
Martin Heidegger

Kornai ( ) says on Oct 25 17:17:41 EDT in #828:
>...a particular faction of>today's ultraright trying to hijack 56, a rare moment of national unity, for>its own purposes. The "szabadsa1gharc" myth, which comes up on this list>time and again, is a key example of this.
There he goes again. The offspring of families belonging to that part of the
intellectual elite that willingly served the Kadar regime -- as long as it
was advantageous -- have a real problem about this time of the year. Yes,
1956 is a very embarrassing numeral for them. So they try to rewrite history
to make their -- or their older kin's -- behavior during the Kadar years
acceptable. First, they deny that there was an armed fight for freedom;
next, that it was actually a reform-communist happening gone wrong when
right-wingers took over. Eventually they might reason that the whole thing
was a riot, and not much more.
It is worth noting that they rarely try to sell their views on
Hungarian-language lists, whose readers are more knowledgeable about the
subject. They must think that non-Hungarians can be told anything as long as
it is in reasonably good English.
Ferenc

At 04:27 PM 10/27/96 -0500, Joe Szalai wrote:
>Too late, Sam! The following was forwarded to me by a friend and it's a>real stunner. The search for the origins of Hungarian may be over.>------------->> Surprise your cat by speaking Hungarian>> The claim that aliens speak Hungarian (Language, The Magazine,>issue 292) should not be dismissed lightly. John Nadler writes:>"According to evidence uncovered by an American UFO researcher Glenn>Campbell, Hungarian may be the mother tongue of alien visitors to the earth."> My research in more than 20 countries indicates that cats all>over the world are able to understand Hungarian. To test this, try>saying "Cica-mica gyere ide" (pronounced "tsitsah mitsah djere eede")>meaning "come here kitten mitten". Tha cat's initial reaction will be to>prick up its ears in surprise that you can speak its language. It may>then come to you.> Could this mean that there is some connection between aliens and>cats - and Hungarians?>>Bernie Awb>Madrid, Spain>------------------>>This is even better than the Sumerian connection, no?
Don't just discard the Sumerian connection. Maybe they were the descendants
of the alien visitors. Can we ask Glenn Campbell or some other scientist?
Gabor D. Farkas

The song "Szomoru vas=E1rnap", to the best of my knowledge, is original
Hungarian, and came up in the late twenties or early thirties. I found it
listed in a Puski catalog from 1986, and there the composer is shown as
Seress. Anybody in Hungary can verify this either from Rozsavolgyi, or the
Association of Hungarian Composers, Authors, etc. I worked for them in
1948, but forgot the Acronym. To be frank, my memory stored an other name,
but I don't know what. Still, Hungarian. In my time, Karady sang it too,
together with peaces from Halalos Tavasz, just as upbeat.
Karoly.

>Now isn't that description very typical of Hungarians? That's how the>Hungarian is known throughout the world. So my question: why then is the>suicide rate so high? Is the discrepancy between style and substance--the>way Hungarians would like to live in the world versus the way the world>"really is"--so great that it drives people to destruction? There's a>line in a book on Hungary in the '30s that, it says, typified a lot of>Hungarians then: "If only we could afford to live the way we do." (Of>course, that's *very* true of Americans today as well!)
What an articulate observation. It seems that people can either reconcile
themselves to how things are or despair because of the discrepancy between
ideal and form.
>Anyway, I'm just mulling it all over. Mulling keeps me so busy I don't>have time to kill myself.
as for having no time to kill oneself, that's one way of keeping going. .
.another way is just taking in the beauty that is in the world and being
grateful for it. and maybe creating a little beauty of one's own.

George Szaszvari (London, Planet Earth, Milky Way) writes:
> ... I read (perhaps in Groves) years ago that the lineage of the Bach> family (of musical fame) originated in (what is today) Hungary. Is there> a musical historian out there who can corroborate (or otherwise) this?
This legend (which Bach himself apparently believed) actually does have
a tiny kernel of truth to it, but not enough to make it a fact. The Bach
clan had roots in Thuringia going back to the 16th century. The legend
arose because Bach's great-grandfather, a baker named Veit (or Vitus in some
documents) did spend a few years in Hungary as an itinerant baker, before
he had to return to Thuringia in the late 1500s, when Hungary became
inhospitable to Protestants. So although there is no reason why Bach could
not be just as Hungarian as Verne Gyula, or Albrecht Durer, or Zsa-Zsa for
that matter, the simple fact is that he was not. This, by the way, does
not make him a better musician, or a worse one, nor would it make Hungarians
as a group more worthy to have such an illustrious person exhibit Hungarian
lineage. If it did, we could declare him a Hungarian posthumously -- the
man, after all, has been dead for over 200 years, so it would be no skin off
his nose, right? -- and feel better for days afterwards.
I am reminded of a passage in the 1953 diaries of Witold Gombrowicz, the
Polish expatriate writer, about the Polish variant of this game:
"I recall a tea in one Argentine home, where my acquaintance, a Pole,
began to speak about Poland. Again, naturally, Mickiewicz and Kosciuszko
together with Sobieski and the Siege of Vienna came riding onto the table.
The foreigners listened politely to these passionate opinions and heard
that "Nietzsche and Dostoyevski were of Polish extraction" and that "we
have two Nobel Prizes in literature." It occurred to me then that if
someone were to praise himself or his family this way, it would be
considered quite tactless. I thought that this auction with other nations
for geniuses and heroes, for merits and cultural achievements, was really
quite awkward because with our half-French Chopin and not-quite-native
Copernicus we cannot compete with the Italians, French, Germans, English,
or Russians. Therefore, it is exactly this approach that condemns us to
inferiority ... Pointing to the foreign elements in the blood of the
Chopins, Mickiewiczes, and Copernicuses, I said that one should not take
too seriously the metaphor that we "gave" these people to the world, as
they were merely born among us. What does Mr Kowalski have in common with
Chopin? Does Chopin's composition of the ballads raise Mr Kowalski's
specific weight by one iota? Can the Siege of Vienna augment Mr Ziebicki
of Radom by even an ounce of glory? No. We are not, I said, the direct
heirs of past greatness or insignificance, intelligence or stupidity,
virtue or sin, and each person is responsible only for himself. Each is
himself.
Nothing that is really your own can impress you. If, therefore, our
greatness or our past impresses us, it is proof that it has not yet
entered our bloodstream."
[end of Gombrowicz quote]
-----
Gabor Fencsik

(George Szaszvari) wrote:
>In article >, says...><snip>.. the>>Austrians wanted once and for all to extinguish the Magyar spirit. This>>culminated in the execution of the 13 generals/statesmen at Arad as well>>as the reign of terror of Bach (not the composer)..<snip>..>>As a matter of fact, I read (perhaps in Groves) years ago that the lineage>of the Bach family (of musical fame) originated in (what is today) Hungary.>Is there a musical historian out there who can corroborate (or otherwise)>this?
About 40 years ago, I read a very thorough 3-volume biographical novel
about Bach (by an author named Lang, I think) in Hungarian. I don't
remember any references to Hungarian ancestry.
For whatever it's worth...
Bandi

In article >,
says...
>>>> National Song by Peto"fi Sa'ndor>>>>>> Talpra Magyar, your country calls!>>> the time for now or never falls!>>> Are we live as slaves or free?>>> Choose one! this is your destiny!>>> By the God of all the Magyars,>>> we swear,>>> we swear never again the chains>>> to bear!>>> -->>> Pest>>> March 13 1848>>in: Petofi / English and introduction by Anthony Nyerges>published by Hungarian Cultural Foundation Buffalo New York 1973>State University College at Buffalo> ( ;-) Sz.Z)
I am afraid all you have proven is that you believe that anything
that appears in print somehow assumes an aura of authority.
Regardless of the source, I can only join the voices of ridicule.
I believe that the quote reflects equally poorly on Mr Nyerges,
the Hungarian Cultural Foundation and the State University
College at Buffalo.
George Antony

In article >, says...
>>For the benefit of all those of Hungarian ancestry who can't read the>original I am sending this beautiful translation by Watson Kirkconnell>(a Canadian):>
Thank you, Eva, for publishing it. It is really a beautiful translation.
Agnes
>National Song ----- Sandor Petofi 1848>>Magyars rise your country calls you!>Meet this hour whate'er befalls you!>Shall we freemen be, or slaves?>Chose the lot your spirit craves! -> By Hungary's holy God> Do we swear,> Do we swear, that servile chains> We'll no more bear!>>Slaves, alas, we long have been,>Shaming our ancestral kin,>They as freemen lived and died;>Captive graves their bones deride.> By Hungary's holy God> Do we swear,> Do we swear, that servile chains> We'll no more bear!>Vile is he who will not give>Life to let his country live,>Counting his poor breath a prize>Dearer than his native skies!> By Hungary's holy God> Do we swear,> Do we swear, that servile chains> We'll no more bear!>Swords are nobler than the fetter->Suit the free-born arm far better.>Yet we've worn harsh chains and chords.>Give us now our faithful swords!> By Hungary's holy God> Do we swear,> Do we swear, that servile chains> We'll no more bear!>Beauty to the Magyar name>Shall return, and ancient fame>That these evile epochs sully>We shall cleanse in battle fully.> By Hungary's holy God> Do we swear,> Do we swear, that servile chains> We'll no more bear!>Where our grassy graves shall sleep,>Children's children still shall keep>All our names in sacred trust,>Kneeling bless our silent dust.> By Hungary's holy God> Do we swear,> Do we swear, that servile chains> We'll no more bear!>>Reference:>Watson Kirkconnell (1895-1977)>Acadia University, Nova Scotia>Hungarian Helicon>Published by the Szechenyi Society Inc.>Calgary, Alta., Canada 1986>>>Eva Kende B.Sc. author of "Eva's Hungarian Kitchen".>